Today modern plant geneticists are performing what would have been
deemed impossible - a century ago - by creating new, hybrid plants
that have never existed before in nature.

As incredible as it may seem, a new type
of corn (Bt-corn),
actually the combination of a bacteria and normal corn is already in
the fields. Why was a bacteria injected into the genes of corn?
Because
Bacillus thuringiensis helps the
new hybrid ‘planteria’ fight off worms.

How is a designer plant like Btcorn created?

Technicians carefully take genetic
material from the bacteria, isolate specific parts of its DNA, and
insert it into the DNA of corn. Then the desired transformation is
achieved in a tissue culture. Technically referred to as
transgenetic plants, designer vegetables involve the transfer of DNA
from one organism to another.

The hybridization seeks to improve the
plant, at least from a human perspective. We are already creating
plant-animals.

Why is it then so farfetched to envision
an advanced race - hundreds of millions of years more sophisticated
than we are - genetically engineering life on Earth? In fact, it is
a plausible scenario as Sir Francis Crick showed in his book
Life Itself and this author will
attempt to prove in The Genesis Race series.

Most soybean plants grown in the U.S. now have been genetically
altered to survive the application of powerful herbicides.

Bt-corn is widely grown and as shown
above was engineered to produce its own organic pesticide thereby
rendering the plants poisonous to earworms. Growth hormone has been
isolated in bovine DNA and inserted into pigs to increase their
weight rapidly and to reduce fat. Dolly, the first genetically
cloned sheep, has already paved the way for other biogenetic
experiments with animal cloning.

This combination ‘alien garden’ and Twilight Zone barnyard is not
all that lurks on our hi-tech farms of today. Just beyond the
perfect rows of uniformly green, identical corn plants is a patch of
ground in the Mid-West enclosed by an electric fence.

The small, 10-acre plot has been planted
with a test crop, or rather a genetically engineered “pharmacrop”,
of corn that has been created to make a human enzyme.

It is hoped that the new hybrid corn
will produce lipase, an enzyme used in treating cystic fibrosis.

“'Pharming', the practice of
altering corn, tobacco, and other plans to make drugs for humans
and animals, has been getting a lot attention in the biotech
industry - and attracting plenty of controversy,” reporter
Lucinda Fleeson wrote earlier this year.

However, bizarre and potentially risky
these bio-gen farming experiments are, Genetically Modified Foods
(GMOs) and farming are sources of controversy and bitter debate in
Europe. However, they have not received the press coverage in
America where their presence is much greater.

It may seem that I am writing this article to either raise awareness
of GMOs, to alert you to their potential dangers, or to sing the
“gee whiz” praises of our newest industry. However, none of the
above is my actual intent. My concern is altogether different.

I
want to know exactly how we got here so quickly? I recall the days
when horses were harnessed to pull ploughs and manure fertilized
fields.

In fact, that form of agriculture was
developed in Sumer and lasted some 4500 years. What happened since
the 1950s? How did we get here - in the broadest sense from the
wild grasses, the ancestors of modern cereal crops - to these Frankenplants?

If you think that our modern geneticists and plant scientists know
the answers and can point to the evidence showing how our primitive
Stone Age ancestors domesticated wild plants, you are a victim of a
scientific shell game. That is what you are supposed to assume.

However, the history of plant
domestication is fuzzy, full of ‘missing links’ and logical
inconsistencies though the public is given the impression that the
history of agriculture holds no real mysteries.

We are told in our history and anthropological textbooks that our
fist civilizations were spawned on the heels of the ‘agricultural
revolution', which occurred in major river valleys.

What the
textbooks fail to tell us is that our Stone Age predecessors did not
harvest and eat the seeds of wild grasses during their long sojourn
through the Paleolithic era. They were hunter-gathers who subsisted
on leafy greens and lean muscle meats.

How come they suddenlyfigured out how to domesticate and turn into major food sources
circa 5,000 BC?

This raises some obvious and very sticky questions concerning the
period of trial and error experimentation and development that must
have gone into domesticating wild wheat into bread wheat and wild
corn into the domesticated variety.

Let us begin with the enigma of the modern corn plant.

The humble
origin of corn remains mysterious because the ancestral wild plant
has never been located. It is an established, scientific fact that
corn is a
cultigen, a plant engineered by
humans. This means that it has become so altered by humans that it
cannot reproduce naturally and is entirely dependent upon man’s
continued cultivation.

In short, it is now a manmade plant and has
been for some time. Scientists have not been able to trace
the lineage of corn to the ancestral wild plant.

How can this be if the ‘agricultural
revolution’ only occurred 7-8,000 years ago?

Corn is a form of wild grass, as are the majority of the other major
crop plants, there is no good reason for the ancestral variety to
have vanished and/or become extinct. 10,000 years may seem like a
long time in human terms yet it is a very short time in terms of the
evolution and life span of a plant species. There are ancient plants
that have existed continuously for hundreds of millions of years.

If you believe that our ancestors domesticated crop plants, you have
to start by assuming that people without any agricultural experience
were brilliant enough to select and breed the best wild seed
candidates to turn into major cereal crops. It is a historical fact
that in spite of 5,000 years of continuous agricultural development
we have not genetically bred a new major crop from a wild species.

Just how ingenious were out Stone Age
predecessors who performed this agronomic feat without any
agricultural or genetic knowledge?

Basing the agricultural revolution on the notion that people who
lacked any understanding of the scientific basis of plant breeding
created seems a very shaky premise. Skepticism is warranted due to
the fact that, if it actually occurred, this was the riskiest of
gambles, since it represented a complete departure from the only way
of life and only food sources that Stone Age people knew.

But first let’s step back to an earlier point and ask how we know
that 100,000 generations of Stone Age humans did not eat wild grass
seeds. Our guts are still not adapted to digest uncooked grains.

After all we are not birds. In addition,
our Paleolithic ancestors lacked the technology to harvest, thresh,
process and cook wild grass seeds. The seeds of wild species are
miniscule and they are attached to the seed heads making them
difficult to harvest and hardly worth the effort.

These are little known facts that raise deeper issues. Our
hunter-gatherer ancestors mainly subsisted on leafy greens and lean
muscle meats. If they lacked an extended experience with wild
grasses how did they know which ones to select to turn into wheat,
rye, corn, barely and rice? In other words these are still the
principal food crops that our civilizations are based upon.

After at least 5,000 years of continuous
agriculture we do not seem to have improved upon the first
selections of our ‘scientifically ignorant’ ancestors. That hardly
seems logical.

This amazingly prescient selection of wild seeds seems not only more
than a little surprising it looks to border on being a minor
miracle. There are an estimated 195,000 flowering plants that they
could have turned into food sources and primitive man chose less
than .01 to base agriculture upon. This happened at a point in time
when people had no concept of domesticating plants or animals, which
means no experience with artificial selection.

To further appreciate the paradox that this situation imposes upon
us we have to understand, domesticated crop plants are nothing like
their wild ancestors. Farmers have long known this fact.

The differences are so great that most
of the specific ancestral locations of our cereal crops remain a
mystery. We must ponder what this really means. What are the
implications of our scientists not being able to trace the specific
wild ancestors of modern corn, wheat, rye, barely and rice?

When we look at the problem of how our ancestors, lacking in both
tools and knowledge, domesticated wild plants it is really
tantamount to pondering how the
Great Pyramid was conceived, designed, engineered and
constructed with stone tools and primitive methods.

There is something out of focus
in the picture we have of the history of civilization on this planet,
how and when agriculture and precision-engineered architecture were
developed and by whom.

It is as if our ancestors were gathered around the campfire inside a
cave and one was using his hands and fingers to tell stories by
throwing shadows against the wall one minute; the next minute they
are watching satellite TV and giddily channel surfing. That is how
great the gaps are between the late Stone Age and the birth of
agriculture and civilization.

How were these quantum leaps made and where is the evidence to
support the orthodox theory that humans engineered them?

The real problem with the orthodox
scenario is the lack of a long incubation period during which
early humans experimented with selective breeding and with
constructing megalithic stone monuments.
Agriculture should - and not doubt actually does - extend back tens
of thousands of years and not the 9,000 that modern science
contends.

The creation of dogs from wild wolves, a
true genetic engineering feat, is proof of this.

A more thorough examination of these issues, including evidence that
human beings could not have domesticated wild wolves 15,000 years
ago and turned them into man’s best friend appears in The Genesis
Race.